I got a text yesterday from someone who spotted a meteor. Not terribly unusual, but this was before the sun set, so it would have to be a pretty big and bright meteor to show up in daylight.
At the same time, we are just past the peak of the Leonid meteor showers for this year. Although they were not expected to put on much of a show this year. For some reason, the Leonids, which happen every November were not expected to be very good. Maybe someone cleaned up a bit and didn’t leave enough space dust around.
Or maybe what was spotted the other day had something to do with the Russians blowing up things in space. Who knows.
The Leonids can be a pretty good show, although not really my favourite when it comes to meteor showers. That would probably be the Perseids, which happen in August. Not that there is any guarantee of more meteors or an overall better display. I just find it far more comfortable to lay around on the back lawn, gazing up at the stars, in August than November.
At the moment, we also seem to have a bit of an issue with cloud cover. I’m beginning to think it could be a plot by aliens to keep us from seeing their activity. It just seems like almost every time there is something interesting going on in the night sky, it suddenly gets cloudy.
Which brings me to the next thing. The lunar eclipse. There is a lunar eclipse tonight. Well, tomorrow morning. It peaks around 5:00 AM our time. I believe it was only going to be a partial eclipse for us, but still, lunar eclipses are pretty interesting.
However, there are a few things going against us for both meteors and lunar eclipses.
There is a full moon tonight. Or again, tomorrow morning. Good for eclipses. Not good for spotting meteors, since the brightness of the moon tends to wash them out quite a bit.
But to see the eclipse, I would have to be up at 5:00 in the morning, which is far from likely to happen.
Also, there is this thing with the clouds. Looking up at the sky to see things happening up there is a lot less fun when rain is falling in your face.
But at least one shooting star was spotted yesterday.
